from the reasonable-and-knowledgeable dept

We recently covered how Comcast's top exec in charge of getting its merger with Time Warner Cable approved has insisted that only ignorant and unreasonable people oppose the merger. And yet... somehow, the public (ignorant and unreasonable as they are...) still don't seem to think too positively of the merger itself. And, for some reason, the terrible, terrible deal that American cable providers (mainly: Comcast and Time Warner Cable) continue to offer Americans as basically their only real broadband possibility still seems to inspire creative derision.

Almost exactly a year ago, we posted a hilarious fake commercial of what your cable company (likely: Comcast or Time Warner Cable) would say in a TV commercial if it were honest. The mildly NSFW video includes the important fine print:

You'll have the option of choosing from several of our completely unwarranted ripoffs, including internet speeds almost 200 times slower than Korea... at twice the price. TV packages with over 500 channels, 90% of which you can't view and we guarantee a plethora of hidden fees. Then our barely trained technicians will come to install your service somewhere between the hours 8am and 10 pm, knock once while you're in the shower, and promptly leave.... Why you ask? We're part of what is called an "oligopoly." It's like a monopoly... only legal!

Watch it again:

Soon after that, we posted another video from some guys pretending to be Time Warner Cable customer service employees asking people around NY what they could do to make service even worse. Go ahead, watch that again too:

And, now, with the attempted merger underway, we've got a third video to add to the bunch. This one comes from Funny or Die, and directly addresses the issue of the merger, and is titled: Comcast Doesn't Give a F*CK. Like the first video above, it's made to look like a traditional cable company commercial, with the direct message being that, well, you know what the message is. Here, watch it:

Key excerpt:

We've read your comments and complaints, and know that a lot of you are very nervous about our merger with Time Warner Cable. So I wanted to talk to you today and let you know, that no matter what happens, we don't give a fuck about you. Whether you're calling in for an appointment about your cable box, or wondering why your favorite channel disappeared, we don't give a fuck. That's what makes us an industry leader in terrible customer service. We don't give a fuck because we don't have to. What? Are you going to go to another cable service provider? [Laughs] Chances are we own whatever movie or network you're watching, so that's still money in our pocket.

You could watch Netflix or Hulu. In fact, you should. We own Hulu. We also make Netflix pay us extra for streaming content, meaning they'll probably pass those costs on to you. Bottom line: Fuck You.

I'm sure all these kinds of videos keep popping up, because the American public doesn't understand how good the service we get from our "local" (and by "local" I mean, Comcast) cable provider is. Or maybe Homer Simpson was on to something. Nah, must just be all those unreasonable and ignorant folks.

from the it's-not-the-declassification... dept

While the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to declassify its $40 million, 6,300 page report detailing the CIA's torture regime -- including the facts that it went beyond what was authorized, produced no useful intelligence and then the CIA lied about it all -- three members of the Committee voted against it. Senators James Risch, Dan Coats (though, who knows if he had any idea what he was voting on) and Marco Rubio all voted against declassifying, with Risch and Rubio putting out a statement claiming that the State Department didn't want the report declassified.

The Senate Intelligence Committee today voted to send a one-sided, partisan report to the CIA and White House for declassification despite warnings from the State Department and our allies indicating that declassification of this report could endanger the lives of American diplomats and citizens overseas and jeopardize U.S. relations with other countries. Therefore, we could not support declassification of this product at this time.

This raised some eyebrows, since the Obama administration has consistently said it supported declassification, even as the CIA was fighting it. Still, it's rare that the State Department would actively contradict the White House. However, the Daily Beast now has more details on the State Department's desire to block the declassification:

A senior Senate aide told The Daily Beast that the Rubio-Risch statement referred to a June 2013 classified letter to senators signed by Philip Goldberg, who at the time served as the State Department’s top intelligence official. The warning was in reference to the fact that the report contains information about cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies and the existence of still-undisclosed CIA “black site” prisons in foreign countries where abuses may have occurred.

CIA facilities implicated in the report have allegedly been located in Thailand, Poland, Lithuania, and Romania, sparking public debate and resentment against the U.S. government in those countries. But officials and senate aides said the report contains information on several more locations.

Diplomats representing those countries, aware of their vulnerability to exposure, have been quietly meeting with administration officials and lawmakers urging them to protect the secrecy of those intelligence relationships. Many foreign governments are still angry about the disclosures of NSA spying by leaker Edward Snowden.

To be fair, the article notes that the letter from Goldberg was not cleared nor reviewed by State Department leadership. Thus, it may be seen less as "the State Department" making these comments, and more as the dude who has to deal with foreign spy agencies for the State Department. But, even so, the letter is ridiculous.

There is a semi-legitimate point that the eventual disclosure of what countries helped the CIA torture people will certainly create some troubling diplomatic situations for those countries. But that's not the fault of the disclosure process. It's because (1) the CIA tortured people and (2) those other countries went along with it. Don't like that that will be disclosed? Then maybe they shouldn't have done it in the first place.

The CIA's torture program was a dark moment in American history and we don't get past it by burying it -- and the story of those who helped -- under the rug. It needs to be out in the open. Even Vice President Joe Biden has said exactly that:

“I think the only way you excise the demons is you acknowledge, you acknowledge exactly what happened straightforward,” Biden said. “The single best thing that ever happened to Germany were the war crimes tribunals, because it forced Germany to come to its milk about what in fact has happened.”

To argue that the embarrassment of admitting that we partnered up with other countries in conducting illegal torture means we shouldn't reveal the details at all goes against everything that we're supposed to stand for, in being willing and able to admit our mistakes. It's shameful that anyone at the State Department -- with or without approval from leadership -- would send such a letter, giving cowardly Senators extra cover for not approving the declassification of the report.

from the politicians:-the-new-common-man dept

USTR Michael Froman is trying to push the illusion that the TPP negotiations are transparent. In the past, various USTR spokespeople have made similar assertions, one of which is claiming that Congress, being so-called "representatives" of the public, are a perfectly suitable proxy for actual transparency. This ignores the fact that, while Congress may be able to view the TPP documents, it can't actually make copies or take notes or even pass it along to staffers who may have more expertise to offer -- to say nothing of the public all the way at the end of the food chain.

Of course, key special interest groups and key stakeholders have full access through a login to the USTR website, which allows them to view the documents at any time (and presumably take notes, disseminate, etc.), rather than be limited to asking the USTR for permission to view a trade agreement--one that not only affects the US and the US public, but several other countries around the world. Businesses that stand to benefit from the agreement have better access to both the documents and our representatives, and yet, the USTR continues to protest that it's open and transparent.

“As we pursue this agenda, we will continue to consult with Congress and seek input from a wide range of advisors, stakeholders and the public. We have held over 1,200 meetings with Congress about TPP alone – and that doesn’t include the meetings we’ve had on T-TIP, TPA, AGOA or other trade initiatives,” he said. “Our Congressional partners preview our proposals and give us critical feedback every step of the way. We also ensure that any Member of Congress can review the negotiating text and has the opportunity to receive detailed briefings by our negotiators.”

Once again, the USTR is claiming secrecy-shrouded "meetings" with Congress to be synonymous with "seeking input from… the public." This isn't even remotely the same thing. Members of Congress aren't free to disseminate the TPP documents or take notes, which ensures nothing substantial will be passed on to the public. Froman's statement takes the public for idiots (something the USTR has done before), expecting them to believe their representatives will hear their voices over the crosstalk of legacy industries and special interest groups.

And the public still has no access, outside of leaked documents. Looking beyond the US-centric view, the stakeholders and public in other countries aren't getting the same level of "transparency." Sure, the USTR may be wearing down the local pols with incessant "meetings," but there's little to indicate there's been as many meetings with foreign officials. There's nearly 40% of the world's GDP at stake here (according to the USTR's numbers) and yet, only a very minute percentage of the world itself has any access to the TPP's documents and negotiations.

As can be expected, Froman listed IP as the top priority for worldwide trade agreements.

“The United States is an innovative economy, and the Obama Administration is committed to protecting intellectual property (IP), which is vital to promoting and encouraging innovation and creativity,” he said. “Millions of American jobs rely on IP, and we will continue to use our trade agenda in 2014 to defend the IP rights of our creators and innovators while supporting the freedom of the Internet, encouraging the free flow of information across the digital world, and ensuring access to medicines, particularly by the poor in less developed economies.”

But that's all a lie, especially the last part about "ensuring access to medicines." The TPP is fighting cheap medicine on several fronts. It contains provisions that make it harder for local companies to produce generics by resetting the patent clock when the drug is introduced to foreign markets. The USTR has also directly told other countries that cheap, affordable medical care/products "fail to recognize the value" of overpriced US offerings.

The USTR isn't interested in the free flow of information related to the TPP negotiations, so it's highly unlikely it has any interest in "encouraging the free flow of information across the digital world." The phrase "supporting the freedom of the internet" doesn't sound right coming from an entity that was one of ACTA's biggest supporters, and one backed by some of SOPA's biggest supporters.

It's a colossal joke, this supposed "transparency" of the USTR and TPP. It smells of old money being carried through revolving doors. When it comes to super-secret negotiations involving legacy players and massive corporations, Congress is hardly a reliable stand-in for the US public.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Maybe you like Caesar salads or the supposed health benefits of drinking raw eggs (a la Rocky Balboa), and you already know about the risks of Salmonella. Well, there's some good news for you: you might be able to get some pasteurized eggs that are virtually indistinguishable from conventional raw eggs. While previous pasteurization methods made eggs a bit thicker in texture, food scientists have been working on fixing that. Here are just a few links on eating raw eggs, if that's your thing.

from the because-hollywood-once-told-us-someone-was-dr.-evil dept

For a while we had followed the bizarre situation with Megaupload's servers. As you may recall, the Justice Department seized them all, following its criminal indictment against Megaupload and many of its executives. However, soon after seizing all of the company's servers, the DOJ announced that it no longer needed them and told the hosting company that had them that the data on them could be destroyed. We pointed out that this seemed like a clear case of destruction of evidence by the DOJ. First, it seized pretty much all of the assets of a company, prior to any conviction, and then before any actual judicial proceedings, asked for most of those assets -- many of which could include exculpatory evidence -- to be destroyed. It seemed... quite questionable. That resulted in a bit of a legal battle, as the hosting company storing them, Carpathia, asked what it should be doing (since it's suffering from the cost of keeping the servers). Megaupload sought to buy the servers, but the DOJ has blocked that effort. Last we'd heard, the judge had told everyone to work it all out by themselves.

This effort was stopped because the U.S. didn’t want Kim Dotcom to have access to the files. Hoping to get out of this stalemate the Court then suggested that all affected parties should get together and come up with a solution, thus far without success.

“In separate written requests in the past year both Carpathia and Megaupload have asked Magistrate Judge Anderson – who was appointed by Judge O’Grady to mediate the cloud storage server data issue – to preside over follow-up negotiations on data preservation and consumer access,” Rothken tells TF.

“The US DOJ has shown little interest in such negotiations and the Judge has not been inclined to set any additional meetings,” he adds.

The whole situation is bizarre. Individuals who had legitimate content stored on Megaupload are still asking for access to get back their content, but the DOJ doesn't seem to care at all. In fact, it's coming up with increasingly bizarre excuses to justify shutting down an entire business based on the entertainment industry's say so, and seems to have no qualms about how many people this has created massive problems for.

As the Aereo case is about to be heard, and various concerns about its impact on cloud computing are being raised, people should look over at what's happening with Megaupload's servers and be even more concerned. If the broadcasters succeed in redefining what is a "public performance," it's entirely conceivable that the DOJ could choose to do the same to other cloud services you rely on -- and there seems to be no recourse whatsoever.

from the thank-god-for-video-cameras dept

Let's all admit something: being in government ain't easy. Between all the lies you have to keep straight, counting all that bribe lobbying money, and constantly looking over your shoulder to see if the CIA is having you followed back to your office, being a representative of the people is one hell of an undertaking. Maybe that's why that revolving door of government and lobbying keeps spitting folks out of our congressional buildings.

Take Senator Dan Coats, for instance. Coats is a serious guy with serious thoughts, such as "Hey, why can't the damned public trust us to spy on them?" and "That guy looks like he has no friends, so he's probably a terrorist!" His most recent thoughts, however, appear to be something along the lines of, "Holy crap, where the hell am I?" Here's your senator at work, Indiana.

Should you be unable to see the video, that's Senator Coats sitting down and questioning the wrong witness at the wrong hearing that he wasn't even supposed to be attending. He rambles on a bit and you can almost see the hamsters spinning up in that noggin as he looks at the witness: "Wait a minute, something isn't right." But he powers through his mistake like a champion until a helpful aide passes him a note that I imagine read something close to: "The home called and they want you to go back to your room and take your pills."

Look, it's a mistake, I get that. Hell, I've shown up at some really awkward places due to a scheduling mishap (big shout out to all my girls from the Saint Benedict's Nunnery bathroom, yo!), but to not only show up in the wrong place at the wrong time, but actually start questioning the wrong damned witness makes me wonder if Coats has anyone around him helping him out. He's not...a loner, is he?

from the evidence,-who-needs-it? dept

A few weeks ago, we noted that FISC Judge Reggie Walton was quite reasonably pissed off at the DOJ for directly withholding key information about evidence in a series of lawsuits concerning NSA surveillance programs. The full details are a bit down in the weeds, but the short summary is that there's been some debate over whether or not the government needs to retain surveillance data because it's evidence in these cases, or if it needs to destroy the surveillance data, as required by the rules over its holding of the data. There's been a bit of back and forth over all of this, but the DOJ apparently directly withheld from the FISC a request by EFF lawyers to inform the court that a data preservation order should cover two of the key NSA surveillance cases that it has been involved in for years (since well before the Snowden disclosures). The DOJ not only did not inform the court, but it also appears to have tried to dissuade the lawyers from raising the issue. Judge Walton ordered the DOJ to explain itself, and it gives a long apology, repeatedly insisting that it didn't believe those cases were related, since they were focused on surveillance data ordered by the President, rather than the FISA Court -- a weak excuse at best:

Based upon the nature of the claims made in Jewel and Shubert, which the Government has always understood to be limited to certain presidentially authorized intelligence collection activities outside FISA, the Government did not identify those lawsuits, nor the preservation
orders issued therein, in its Motion for Second Amendment to Primary Order filed in the above-
captioned Docket number on February 25, 2014. For the same reasons, the Government did not
notify this Court of its receipt of plaintiffs' counsel's February 26, 2014, e-mail. With the
benefit of hindsight, the Government recognizes that upon receipt of plaintiffs' counsel's e-mail,
it should have made this Court aware of those preservation orders and of the plaintiffs'
disagreement as to their scope as relevant to the Court's consideration of the Government's
motion and regrets its omission. The Government respectfully submits that in light of this
submission, and this Court's Opinion and Order dated March 12, 2014, granting the
Government's motion for temporary relief from the destruction requirement in subsection of
the Court's Primary Order, no additional corrective action on the part of the Government or this
Court is necessary.

It goes on for much longer trying to suggest that this was all just an honest mistake, and how could it have possibly realized that the lawyers for the plaintiffs in those cases might think the issue of preserving their evidence was related to similar questions over preserving evidence of other NSA cases. It insists that it really was just focused on the more recent cases that were filed post-Snowden ("filed after last year's unauthorized public disclosure concerning the collection of telephony metadata pursuant to FISA authority") and hadn't even considered how it related to older cases concerning NSA surveillance.

The Government did not notify the Court of Jewel and Shubert in the Motion because the
Government has always understood those matters to challenge certain presidentially authorized
intelligence collection activities and not metadata subsequently obtained pursuant to orders
issued by this Court under FISA, and because the preservation issues in those cases had been
previously addressed before the district court in which those matters are pending. Jewel and
Shubert, filed in 2008 and 2007, respectively, challenge particular NSA intelligence activities
authorized by President Bush after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks without statutory or
judicial authorization.

As the DOJ goes on to explain, it assumed the preservation issues in the Jewel and Shubert cases were settled, and therefore irrelevant to the FISA issue (especially since, in its mind, the two sets of cases covered different programs). Thus, the DOJ claims, its emails dissuading the lawyers from raising the issue weren't so much about silencing those lawyers and hiding information from FISC, but were a true misunderstanding, in that it was just letting those lawyers know the issues were unrelated, as well as a desire (no joke) to not bother the FISC with unnecessary distractions.

In particular, the request in its February 28 email that counsel for the Jewel plaintiffs "forebear from filing anything with the FISC, or [the district court], until we have further opportunity to confer" was a good faith attempt to avoid unnecessary motions
practice in the event that the issue could be worked out among the parties through the
Government's provision of an unclassified explanation concerning its preservation in Jewel and
Shubert. Accordingly, the Government did not bring the Jewel plaintiffs' February 25 email to
this Court's attention.

Of course, there's still the big question of, between the two FISA court orders, whether or not the DOJ did, in fact, destroy some of the evidence. And, a follow-up correction from the government very strongly suggests that it absolutely did use the opportunity to destroy evidence. The follow-up is a correction to a footnote, in which the DOJ makes it clear that "consistent with the Government's understanding" (which appears to be mistaken) and "prior to" the more recent filing, "the Government complied with this Court's requirements that metadata obtained by the NSA under Section 215 authority be destroyed no later than five years after their collection."

What that almost certainly means is that the NSA destroyed the metadata collected up until 2009, which likely is relevant to the Jewel and Schubert cases, even though the lawyers in those cases had alerted the DOJ of these concerns. For all of the DOJ's "apologies" in the first document, this certainly seems very convenient for the US government. And, as Marcy Wheeler notes, the destroyed evidence may have included "cover almost all of the phone dragnet violations discovered over the course of 2009." Convenient. But the DOJ is really, really sorry about it. Really.

from the but-of-course dept

While the Senate Intelligence Committee has finally started the process of declassifying at least some of the $40 million, 6,300 page report about the CIA's torture efforts, we're getting more and more leaks about what's in the report. Previous leaks showed that the torture program was completely uselessand that the CIA simply lied about its effectiveness (in fact, taking information gleaned by others through normal interrogations, and claiming they got it via torture). The latest leak highlights how, despite claims by the CIA's supporters, that the torture was done in "good faith" and was approved by the DOJ and the CIA, it turns out that (of course), that the CIA's torturers actually went much further than they were approved to go.

CIA officers subjected terror suspects it held after the Sept. 11 attacks to methods that were not approved by either the Justice Department or their own headquarters and illegally detained 26 of the 119 in CIA custody, the Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded in its still-secret report, McClatchy has learned.

The spy agency program’s reliance on brutal and harsh techniques _ much more abusive than previously known _ and its failure to gather valuable information from the detainees, harmed the U.S.’s credibility internationally, according to the committee’s findings in its scathing 6,300 page report on the CIA’s interrogation and detention program.

So, again, we have evidence that the CIA tortured people, did so beyond any actual authority (as sketchy as such an authority might be), got nothing of value from the torture, and then repeatedly lied about the torture and the value of it to Congress and the American public. And... no one is going to jail over this. Well, except for the guy who blew the whistle. In fact, many of those responsible for the torture program are still in positions of power. This is a total disgrace.

from the because-high-court dept

By now, it's well-known that James Clapper directly lied to Congress over a year ago when Senator Ron Wyden asked him whether or not the NSA collected any data at all on millions of Americans (a question he had sent Clapper a day earlier, so he wouldn't be surprised by it). Clapper insisted the NSA did not, something we now know is completely false. While Clapper first tried to dodge this lie by saying he thought Wyden was asking about a different program, and later claiming that this was the "least untruthful" answer, he eventually admitted that he lied and apologized to Senator Wyden. Back in December, however, a bunch of members of the House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (the author of the PATRIOT Act) asked the DOJ to investigate Clapper for lying to Congress, noting that it is a criminal act to "knowingly and willingly" make any "materially false" statements to Congress.

So, how's that investigation going? Sensenbrenner is wondering that himself, because he received no response at all from the DOJ, leading him to feel the need to send yet another letter, asking whether the DOJ ever planned to get back to him.

On December 19 of last year, I wrote, along with six of my colleagues, to request that you
investigate Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for his "erroneous" testimony before the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last year. Nearly three-and-a-half months later, we have not
received a response or an update on the status of your investigation.

On March 12, 2013, Senator Ron Wyden asked Director Clapper, "Does the N.S.A. collect any
type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Director Clapper answered "No,
Sir." Wyden pressed, "It does not?" Clapper replied, "There are cases where they could inadvertently
perhaps collect, but not wittingly."

Now declassified documents reveal that Director Clapper's testimony was false, and further, that
he knew it was false when it was offered. Congress is currently considering proposals regarding
intelligence reform. In considering these proposals, we need assurances that we can adequately conduct
oversight following new legislation. Congressional oversight, however, depends on truthful testimony.
Intelligence officials cannot be permitted to lie with impunity.

I respectfully request an update as soon as possible.

It's good to see Sensenbrenner following up, though I highly doubt that the DOJ will do a damn thing about it.

from the because-. dept

Oh, Comcast. Remember how it was going to try to be a bit more subtle in pushing for approval of its merger with Time Warner Cable? Well, you can only deny your true nature for so long. The main force behind getting the merger approved, Comcast's Executive VP David Cohen -- the company's most powerful lobbyist who isn't registered as a lobbyist because he's realized that as long as he says he's not lobbying, he isn't -- has announced that no one knowledgeable or reasonable has objected to the merger. By implication, of course, this means that everyone objecting to the merger is ignorant and unreasonable:

"I have been struck by the absence of rational, knowledgeable voices in this space coming out in opposition or even raising serious questions about the transaction." Cohen added.

Meanwhile, the obviously ignorant and unreasonable Writers Guild of America West has spoken out against the merger, noting that Comcast's increasing use of broadband "caps, tiers, metering or other usage-based pricing" could create serious problems in killing off competitive online video distributors. And the eminently knowledgeable and reasonable Comcast retorted that it doesn't have any caps at all. Oh no. It's merely "testing data thresholds."

"We don’t have data caps — and haven’t for about two years," said Sena Fitzmaurice, Comcast’s vice president of government communications. "We have tested data thresholds where very heavy customers can buy more if they want more — but that only affects a very small percentage of our customers in a few markets."

Apparently, spewing complete bullshit is the only thing that counts as "reasonable" and "knowledgeable" in the minds of Comcast's top execs.

from the one-step-forward,-two-steps-back dept

Nothing sucks more than a great new technology with old-world thinking attached to it. Such has been the case with ebooks, unfortunately, with antiquated views on DRM, pricing, and storefront protectionism resulting in pissed off customers and libraries hollering from the nearest rooftop. What we're left with is a platform that could do much to spread knowledge and the practice of reading among entire populations being stifled by those that still think the world should operate based on analog philosophies.

Today, the situation has come full circle. If a student in Freiburg wants to read the hard-copy version of a book from the university library in Basel, he or she can simply order it via an interlibrary loan. But if only an electronic version is available, interlibrary loans are generally not an option. The student has no choice but to climb into a train and head to Switzerland to read the book on a university computer.

It is a paradox: Books that traveled around the world via interlibrary loan in the 20th century paper era are safeguarded locally in the Internet age. Indeed, it is the sheer ease with which electronic publications can be sent around the world that is now resulting in their being locked up behind digital bars. The book doesn't go to the reader, the reader comes to the book -- just like in the 19th century.

If that doesn't strike you as absurd, you're likely missing some significant sections of your brain. The very benefit the entire digital experience has brought most other marketplaces and forms of communication and learning in the past thirty years is being blocked by a trumped-up policy born out of fear. Just think about that for a moment: the same book I can get on loan from a far-off library is unavailable to me in ebook format, even though the transfer of that ebook is easier, cheaper, and quicker. That, friends, is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

But it gets more stupid. This doesn't simply apply to fictional entertainment, but to true knowledge platforms as well, and the willingness to be wasteful is astounding.

The issue is the core of the knowledge economy: essays, articles and books from researchers. "We have thousands of e-books that we could make available to our users via the Internet," says Harald Müller, head librarian at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. "Be we often aren't allowed to because licenses are so restrictive."

Copyright laws often lead to "delightful absurdities," says Müller. If, for example, he wants to read an essay from an American library via interlibrary loan, "they will print it out on paper and send it over by fax -- and I will then scan it into our computers here." Sending it as an email attachement is forbidden.

In other words, everyone ends up in the exact same place they would if ebook lending was opened up, except it's slower, less efficient, costlier, and requires physical resources that nobody is actually interested in using. This is the epitome of inefficiency, and it's the answer to whether or not the originators of copyright law would support this kind of application: no they damn well wouldn't. Imagine Thomas Jefferson being showed how copyright was being used to limit knowledge and that imagining had better end with Jefferson punching everyone involved.

So, who's fault is it? The answer is the combination of governments unwilling to consider change and, of course, publishers. Most egregious are the academic publishers.

In many cases, it is the readers themselves who, through their taxes, pay the university authors whose studies they are then unable to access. It is also likely that many professors themselves cannot even afford a subscription to the journal in which their work is published. Subscription rates of up to €15,000 ($20,633) per year are hardly a rarity. The Journal of Comparative Neurology, for example, comes with a price tag of more than €20,000 annually. Authors who publish their works in such a journal usually don't see a single cent for their labors. Publishing companies such as Reed Elsevier, by contrast, regularly achieve pre-tax profit margins of over 25 percent.

"Publishers of scientific journals make so much money because they collect their product for free from taxpayers and then sell it back at inflated prices," says Günter M. Ziegler, a distinguished mathematician at Berlin's Free University.

And the suppression of knowledge is the result of all this protectionist nonsense. When we've reached the point where the researchers aren't being paid and the public can't access their papers, things need to change.

from the well,-duh dept

This will hardly come as a surprise, but Cindy Lee Garcia -- the actress who appeared in 5 seconds of the 13-minute "trailer" known as "Innocence of Muslims" and somehow convinced the 9th Circuit Appeals court to say she had a copyright interest in the film, allowing her to demand a widespread and highly questionable order to force Google to take down all copies of the video on its platforms -- doesn't think there's anything wrong with the ruling or with the 9th Circuit's denial of Google's request to stay the order until the case could be reconsidered. As we noted earlier, the court has asked for briefs on whether or not it should reconsider the request for the stay (prior to even deciding if it should reconsider the entire ruling). Garcia's lawyer, Cris Armenta has filed their brief on this issue, and as with many earlier filings, it is problematic on many levels.

In short, though, she of course argues that the original ruling was correct, that her "copyright" has been infringed and that any ruling to the contrary leaves her in great danger. Despite plenty of copyright lawyers and experts reacting in horror to the original ruling, she insists it's obvious that every actor in a film gets a copyright in their own performance. As for the fact that the Copyright Office itself rejected her copyright claim saying that "longstanding practices do not allow a copyright claim by an individual actor or actress in his or her performance contained within a motion picture," Garcia says that the court should just ignore all that bluster. I mean, really, who does the Copyright Office think it is, anyway? Actually, she first challenges the "questionable provenance" of the Copyright Office's rejection of her copyright, since she says Google got a copy before she did, and then that it apparently doesn't include a statement from the Copyright Office that it "is a true and correct copy of the record in question." Even then, she begs the court to ignore the Copyright Office.

Further, this court should not defer to the letter because it is
inconsistent with the Copyright Office's previous interpretation of the
Copyright Act.... Previously, the Copyright Office interpreted the Copyright Act much differently than it does now. As recently as 2010, the Office explicitly stated that performances consisting of "the art of imitating or acting out situations, characters, or other events" are copyrightable as pantomime.

Of course, that's a totally different issue. Yes, the Copyright Office says that pantomimes are copyrightable (a different issue that has its own problems), but that's unrelated to the question of whether an actor in a motion picture retains the copyright in their performance. Instead, Garcia tries to reverse this question, by saying that nowhere has the Copyright Office ever said that actors do not get a copyright in their performance. Because anything the Copyright Office doesn't say is clearly what they allow.

With respect to the issue of motion pictures, nowhere does the Compendium state that actors who are not employees and who have not transferred the rights in their work are not entitled to copyright protection.... Indeed, the Compendium only states that a film's producer is the "author" for purposes of copyright in situations where the participants are employees or have entered into work-for-hire agreements. If the Office's "longstanding practices" truly forbade an actor who never assigned the rights in her performance from asserting copyright, the Office would have mentioned those practices before now.

Of course, the other problem with Garcia's filing is that it doesn't actually focus on the issue at hand. The Court specifically asked that the filings focus on the question of whether or not an en banc panel should rehear the question of a stay for the injunction. Garcia's filing focuses on the overall ruling, not the specifics of the stay, and why the initial injunction can't be stayed until further proceedings occur. That said, given the way Kozinski has handled this so far, who knows what will happen.

from the wonder-how-that-will-turn-out dept

In our post about the Senate Intelligence Committee agreeing to declassify the executive summary and major findings of the $40 million, 6,300 page "devastating" report on how the CIA tortured people for no good reason and then lied about it, we noted that there was still a battle over who would handle the declassification process. Senator Mark Udall directly noted that the White House had a choice. It could handle the declassification efforts itself, give it to the director of national intelligence... or give it over to the CIA itself. Guess which choice the White House has gone with? Yup, you guessed it: The CIA itself gets to choose which parts of the report remain secret. Considering the CIA has spent many months attacking the report, declaring that it was misleading and full of errors, it seems rather ridiculous that the Agency itself is in charge of determining what can and can't be released from the report.

from the now-you-see-it dept

Let me let you in on a little fantasy of mine: every once in a while, I like to imagine finding myself meeting the person who came up with the term "global warming." Why? So I can punish that person. Severely. See, what a term like "global warming" does is allow the guy in the cubicle next to me to point out of the window in Chicago and say, "If global warming is true, why is it snowing out again?" And that, friends, is something nobody should have to deal with.

Climate change is the better term, of course, and the majority of the scientific community firmly believes that there is such a thing as man-made climate change. From there, we could have a discussion about how profound the effects of climate change are, whether they're actually better or worse, what other contributing factors might be in play in impacting climate, and all the rest, and those would be worthy conversations to have. What we shouldn't do is try to use the law to silence dissenting opinions, particularly if those opinions come in the form of scientific research. Yet, that is exactly what one scientific journal has allowed to happen after publishing an article on the link between those who deny climate change and those who believe in a more wide-ranging array of conspiracy theories. Frontiers originally published the piece last year, but took it down once the legal threats started rolling in. After an internal investigation found the peer-reviewed study to be sound, you'd have thought they'd re-publish it. You'd be wrong. Here's the statement about the retraction from the journal itself.

In the light of a small number of complaints received following publication of the original research article cited above, Frontiers carried out a detailed investigation of the academic, ethical and legal aspects of the work. This investigation did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study. It did, however, determine that the legal context is insufficiently clear and therefore Frontiers wishes to retract the published article. The authors understand this decision, while they stand by their article and regret the limitations on academic freedom which can be caused by legal factors.

In other words, a study that was judged by peers to be scientifically sound, has been disappeared over the murky threats of possible legal action. Let that sink in for a moment: science is undone because some people didn't like it. The author of the study resided at the time in the UK, where libel laws used to be of a construction specifically designed to fill the courthouses with all manner of craziness. Just recently, the UK has improved its libel laws to lessen the chilling effect of lawsuits from harming the progression of science. On top of that, the internal review at the journal found no issues with the study after making some minor alterations to appease the angry. Frontiers didn't see fit to re-publish, however.

It is hard to imagine a set of outcomes that would have better remedied each issue flagged by Frontiers as a matter of concern. So it came as quite a shock to hear that the journal had decided to retract the paper ostensibly because “the legal context is insufficiently clear”.

Look, if you're a climate change denier, that's cool. I don't agree with you, but feel free to write up your own research, publish any compelling information you can come up with, and all the rest. Consensus is never something I've been much interested in; I'd rather have multiple ideas to choose from and study. And, hey, if you think we never landed on the moon, Hitler was actually fighting the lizard-people now running world government, and 9/11 was all a holographic light-show designed to allow George Bush to fulfill his childhood dream of landing on an aircraft carrier in a flightsuit, have at it. I want you to let me know you believe in that stuff, because that's how I'll know to keep my future children away from you.

But the other side of the coin is that we shouldn't be allowing your side to silence science, either. Fair is fair, after all.

from the but-then-what dept

Last fall, one of the big stories concerning NSA surveillance efforts was around the fact that it had spied on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone calls. While this didn't sound particularly surprising (spying on foreign leaders is kind of what you expect intelligence agencies to do), from a diplomacy standpoint, it certainly was awkward. In response to this, the White House agreed to stop spying on her, but it appears to have simply shifted to spying on everyone she talks to. Just a few days ago, new leaks showed how NSA partner-in-spying, GCHQ out of the UK directly targeted Merkel with its spying tools.

The hearings also have the potential to provoke further antipathy. Indeed, a number of lawmakers here are now demanding safe passage to Berlin for Snowden — who is living in self-imposed exile in Moscow — to testify before the eight-person committee. Any such move would likely outrage the United States, which is seeking to take Snowden into custody.

Given the potential for angering Washington, analysts believe Merkel’s government will find a way to sidestep such a move. Nevertheless, the push to give Snowden his day here serves as another reminder that, even as the scandal appears to be dissipating in other parts of Europe, it remains at the top of the agenda in Germany.

As noted above, this seems unlikely to happen and is almost certainly just for show. I would imagine that Snowden himself might not feel all that safe in Berlin either, given its close ties to the US, though potentially he could use a trip to Berlin as a launching point to go somewhere else (one issue he's had in seeking asylum is that many countries say you have to be present in that country before requesting asylum). Also, there's a separate issue that suggests much of this is just for show, which is that Germany's own intelligence agencies are likely involved in similar activities themselves. So while it makes sense from a political standpoint to stomp and scream about all of this, it's doubtful that Germany will do too much, for fear that its own intelligence practices will become public as well.

from the you-bet-we-can dept

More than three years ago, I wrote a post predicting that "the revolution will be distributed." In talking about a variety of attacks (mainly on Wikileaks), I pointed out that these were only going to inspire more and more interest in building an internet that is not nearly as centralized, but actually much more decentralized and distributed -- and that those defending the status quo still don't realize what an astoundingly big impact this will have. Soon after, we noted that the real battle lines for the future will be about distributed and open systems against centralized and closed systems. Movement in this arena has certainly been slow, but it's continued to move forward. The Snowden leaks of the past year have really only accelerated the process -- and interest in these kinds of projects.

Over at the New Yorker, they have a pretty good status update on "the mission to decentralize the internet," though, unlike a big centralized project, that "mission" is done in a decentralized and open manner as well. The short summary might lead some to dismiss this whole trajectory -- as many of the initial attempts have failed to gain much traction. But that would be a huge mistake. One of the things that you will see, if you study the history of innovation, is that this is exactly how it always happens. The early projects may have some minor successes here and there, but are littered with failures. But the amazing thing about a rapidly changing world where people are doing things in a decentralized and open way is that each of those failures only contributes to the knowledge for future projects, in which more and more people are testing more and more things, getting closer to hitting that point in the "innovator's dilemma" curve, where the new systems actually serve people's needs much better than the old way.

It often feels like these new systems suck at first, and it's easy to dismiss them as not being real competition for the established ways of doing things -- but the rapid rate of improvement, and the almost underground nature of many of these advancements means that when they suddenly catch on, they'll catch on quickly, and the folks who previously dismissed them as not being viable won't know what hit them. In fact, I've seen a few much more ambitious projects than what Joshua Kopstein discusses in his article, which suggests we're already well on our way to creating much more distributed systems that will make many of the debates we have today about the internet, internet governance, surveillance, copyright and much, much more totally obsolete. It's an issue I'm planning to explore in much more detail in 2014, so stay tuned...